Lessons

Lesson Info

What to Do Each Day

This is lesson eleven of session one, and this is exactly what to do each day. You want instructions, you want permission? I'm going to give it to you now. And as I said, it's all in the marketing plan calendar here's the cover of the marketing plan calendar, which you confined on marketing dash mentor dot com in case you want it. And by the way, there's actually a promo code for ten dollars off of this and all the products in the workbook. So you need the workbook to figure out how to get ten dollars off. But that's just one little, uh, offer so your marketing plan here's, what you do every day monday is for research, right. Monday is a really good day to do research, and when I talk about doing your marketing every day, I'm suggesting perhaps just a half an hour a day, maybe an hour at the most. Jill anderson actually has marketing mondays while she devotes her whole monday to marketing, you could do it in whatever way makes the most sense for you. You can be flexible, as I said befo...

re, that's an important quality and change it up from week to week, but you have to commit to doing your marketing every day, and this plan will tell you exactly what to do so what are you researching on monday? And I suggest first thing in the morning, especially you do these things all of these things, if possible, because you know what happens? Things start, teo happen, and people start to call and e mails and panics, and then your marketing gets put on the back burner and, oh, I didn't get to it because you didn't make it a priority. It has to be, in my opinion, the very first thing that you do for yourself. All right, so you're researching, you're looking for prospects. So now here I have indicated which of the four seas, which of the marketing activities is associate id with each of these tools and spaces, specifics of the tools. So if you're looking for prospect it's that's about choosing, if you're looking for events that's about connecting if you're looking for directories and lists of prospects or referral sources that's about choosing and connecting, all right, so these are all the different things you could and should be researching on a monday. All right, tuesday tuesday is for prospecting. All the people you researched and the events that you researched but especially the people that you researched on tuesday you're going to do some prospecting you're going to reach out to them I did not say cold calling I said outreach right? And we also talked a little while ago and will again in session to about warm email prospecting but that is about connecting reaching out to people is about connecting this direct outreach also buy a phone or snail mail also about connecting that's all prospecting and outreach for speaking opportunities or places where you could give webinars, webinars or other opportunities to build credibility that's the kind of prospecting you can also be doing that's tuesday you're not tired yet are you half a hour or an hour each day? First thing wednesday is for content marketing so content marketing your email newsletter is again, as I said before the best content marketing tool you have if you don't have any content marketing tools, you start with the e mail newsletter and then you build from there so that's also, as we said about cultivating, you can have a blawg where you use your email newsletter to drive traffic to the block, which is about credibility and connecting you can use social media to connect with people who you don't know and then bring them into your network so that's a combination of connecting and credibility and as we said and as a gn brought up the podcasting is also part of building credibility in your market so all of those things are part of content, marketing and the thing about content marketing which I think most people don't quite realise is that one little piece of content can be repurposed if you will or recycled into many different delivery streams so an email news that there could be turned into a block post which could be turned into a podcast if you read it out loud or if you interview someone about it and then could be shared by social bias social media right? So content marketing is basically coming up with one idea perhaps per month or maybe even one idea per quarter that you milk essentially for that whole time using all of these ideas it's not you have to come up with all these different ideas you just have to have one really good idea and then you fill it out you uh flesh it up right? So that's wednesday thursday's about follow up so remember those people you were prospecting on tuesday? Two days later you're going to follow up with them and again we'll talk more about that in session to about how exactly you do that, but you're going to call the people that you emailed on tuesday and you're going to also do follow up if you have outstanding money or perhaps you have proposals that you're waiting to hear on thursday is the day you reach out to those people those are all ways of connecting right and then you can reach out to piers so follow up really is mostly about connecting that's what you do on thursday and then on friday there's a lot to do on friday it's all about updating your website be on making your website marketing smart remember as I said in the exercise just do one thing at a time don't try to revamp your whole website all at once just to one thing at a time that's how it will get done and google loves it when you have new content on your site so that's why doing a little bit at a time will also help with your search engine rankings so you can develop packages for your services paige and I will be showing examples in session three of different kinds of packages you could have you could add a new project to your samples in your portfolio you khun tweak your contact form you can add to or reorganize your client list you can add your email newsletters to your site you can add resource is I think a marketing smart website also has a list of resource is that are that speak to and demonstrate your positioning and your clarity on who your market is it speaks to the needs of your market so, for example, this is kind of ah, new ideas. So I'm gonna elaborate on it a little bit. I have a client who is a copywriter for fundraisers, and on her resource is paige. She has all of the nonprofit associations that she is also a member of she's got a bunch of nonprofit newsletters that she subscribes to and thinks would be useful to her clients. So if anyone looks at her resource is paid, they see she knows all about this industry, and therefore she can help me so it's kind of a positioning tool and allows you to kind of support your expertise and the message that you want to deliver. All right, uh, you can always update your bio. In fact, when you update your bio on lengthen, as you probably know, it gets included in a message that goes out to everyone in your network about something that's new, so that's, a good way to not be emailing them, but also to get your name in front of people. Just update a little something on your profile, and as I said before, you can be adding testimonials to your website as you gather them. I so does that sound like too much work? Well, I have a question from mary, and four people have voted on this and mary saying this all makes sense clearly they get it but how do you balance the time building your business and doing all these activities with actual content for the business? I mean, they're actually you know they're working developing clients but all this is this is they know they need to do it, but I've got work to do okay, so a couple thoughts there one is that the way I see it um because a lot of people think that their current paying clients are more important than their own marketing and self promotion and I guess in a concrete short term way that makes sense because they're the ones paying you and if they're not gonna pay you then you may not be able to pay your rent, but the reality is that your marketing is your future it represents your future. So if you're not doing your marketing if you're not investing your time and your money and your attention in your marketing and doing it in a strategic way, then your future is gonna be here in the present and it won't be what you want and you'll still think you have to do exactly what your clients I want you to dio and really it's not about the big picture for you, so that doesn't exactly quite yet address the question so the idea is that, uh you should actually be spending twenty percent of your time building your business right? So that's one day a week twenty percent that means that your billable time is not forty hours a week or fifty hours a week it is perhaps thirty hours a week and you need to make sure that you can charge enough in thirty hours to make the goal the monthly goal that you need because you must devote this time to your marketing and what I see happening is people do it in january for a week or two or the month and then things get busy and they fall off the wagon and it gets put on the back burner and the cycle starts again a feaster famine and the thing is that with the marketing plan, if you're not doing it in an ongoing way when you need the work right when your calendar starts to thin out a little bit is when you need the prospects, but it takes time to cultivate those relationships and get them in your pipeline and so that's why you need to be doing on a regular basis so that they're ready and you're ready when the time is right does that make sense? Justin? I'm calculating in my head that probably about an hour and a half you should be spending and you said in the morning on each one of these things up your day it's been an hour and a half on each that's about less than eight hours. Yes. Okay, so we have two ends of the spectrum here, right? My half on hour a day is for the people who are doing nothing and insist they can't do anything. I'm saying, just start with something so small happen our that's all you need the ideal and what jill does is one day a week, right? Ok, so and you work toward that? I'm not saying start with one day a week because most people I can't afford that, right? But you work toward that, and you see that it starts to really affect your life and your business and allows you to well, I guess what happens, actually, is that you start getting better clients. And so you do have the time to devote to your own marketing because you're charging more it's kind of a circular thing, but it feeds on itself. Do we have other questions in there? Good. Good to move on. But thanks for clarifying next. I think that is what holds a lot of people back. Yes. Okay, so let's, see here. So here we are at the exercise. And I want to spend a little bit of time on this also in the chat room, asking some of these questions, so put those questions in there while we talk to the people in the room if you would jae ko because the details for the marketing plan are in the workbook as well as much more elaborated in the marketing plan but the questions are I'll give them all at once and then we'll talk about some of the five marketing tests okay, so we're talking about the tasks now write research prospecting content marketing follow up and updating your website of those five which one comes the most naturally to you likewise, of those five which one is the most challenging for you and what one task today? Can you commit to whether it's a half a hour a day or an hour a day or I'm gonna get some testimonials? Whatever it is, what one task can you commit to to take action right now or as soon as we finish here, right to make some changes and kind of be moving in that direction saying, would you start your, um the one that comes naturally to me, I would say, is research all right? Uh, that's probably. And what do you research? Just looking for a new opportunities looking for tools, looking for events, that stuff and where do you research, usually online near local community see what's going on and yeah, just the directories and lists and social media one of the things that's kind of amazing when people start doing the research is how much information is actually available and free online right lists of people more and more who have attended or ours be peed to an event and all of their contact information. And if it happens to be your market than there's your prospect list right there, right or on linked in, for example, if you find a group ah group related to the food industry, for example, or marketing people in the food industry, then the members of that group is your prospect list, right? There is so much information available more than you need it will overwhelm you. How much there is some of it is very high quality, some of it not so much really. What you're looking for is actual contact information of the people who are your best prospects, who fit what we're going to talk about in session to actually about how to clone your favorite clients who fit that description, but that's, what you need to be researching and it's really easy to say, do online research and then once you get in front of your computer, like, what do I do? Google it starts there, but it goes much beyond that and actually also in session to will be talking to edgar india about his favorite research tools all right, so that is your most challenging oh that's the one that comes most naturally to you. What about the most challenging? I would be content creation for example uh, I've been meaning to do a podcast and I've bought all the equipment is just sitting there my studio's kind of set up but I just kind of scared of what? Just being, you know, doing my podcasting and creating content and just putting it off for a while um do you have ideas for what the content would be? Yeah, I mean, just ideally, like probably just doing interviews of thought leaders that I admire that's kind of what I was going towards, but yeah, I would say that's the most shining for me right now in terms of planning it out spending time uh, because it takes time to build great quality content. It does, but let me, um here's a a technique that ah lot of my clients have been using with their content mark giving, which is actually very effective. So in a way, the content marketing the email newsletter the podcast whatever it is is just an excuse to reach out to the people you want to connect with, right? Because if you are going after ceos or marketing people of food, business is right, then you can say, I have this podcast I got this email news and I've got this blawg on this topic, and I'd like to interview you for it, and people love to be interviewed, right? And that is actually your prospect that's a dream client, and you get to ask all the questions you want, so you kind of pretending to be a journalist, you're not pretending because you're actually going to post it, you're going to publish it, but that you're content. Marketing is a perfect way to connect with the people you actually want to talk tio so I suggest that you get on that zane, right? Because a podcast especially if you do an interview situation, um that's very engaging for people and it's a little less scary because it's not just you talking and, you know, start with practice prospects, I'll talk a little bit more about that later also the idea of don't go after your dream contacts first get used to doing it with the practice ones. All right? So tomorrow you're gonna be doing that or today later today so that when you come back tomorrow, you can tell us how it went. All right, would you want to get on my podcast, maybe I would be happy to be on your yes to that, they love it there's no reason not to all right raina talk to us about what comes most naturally what's most challenging and what one thing you're going to d'oh okay, so I think most naturally to me comes to follow up okay? Just cultivating relationships, keeping up with people following up after proposals and so on have no problem with that and do you have a special system for tracking that? Because that's one of the organizational tools right that a lot of people don't have in place so how exactly do you do it? What do you do? I have a weekly list of two duis and I check him off and that's kind of it on a piece of paper. Yes. Uh, good. And how do you keep track of who you said what to? I don't know. All right, well, actually, in the marketing plan calendar there is a spreadsheet that helps people keep track of the people that they've reached out to. So that might be a good tool for you also just some kind of spread sheep so that you have notes this is what I said to them the last time they didn't respond or they did respond they said contact me in in, you know, ten weeks or two weeks and that will help you in your follow up well, um uh it kind of goes naturally into the most challenging and because, um the prospecting I think is it's actually honestly something I've never done I've always been so busy that I felt like I didn't have to um I realize now that if I do it, I might be able to get a different type of client that gets me to a different level, so I got the point that's what I want to dio but that's definitely gonna be challenging for me to kind of find the right tone and the right person and do you even, like know whereto look and that again, luckily, we're talking a lot about that on session too, so that will be great. Okay, so what one thing in that direction do you think you can do first? What is your first step? I think my first step is gonna be to update my link and linked in profile and just go explore a little bit because I like I said, I haven't used it at all. Excellent. All right, thank you and justin, before we go to the online chat room to see what they're saying let's, see what justin says? Well, I'm looking at this list and it's really cool let's see this for the first time and I'm looking at this list and I I think my, you know, what is it? What comes naturally to me is collecting outstanding money on then the rest is something that is challenging from you know where the rest of these things are are challenging for me and so it's really nice to actually see them here and be like this is what I need to work on and it's very digestible like monday tuesday you know, here it is like this is very accessible on dh I guess the one task I'd commit to I think the looking for event events because that's one of the plans that I have this year is to find those conferences so really like deciding those three conferences that I'm going to go to and commit to buying a ticket so excellent you're beautiful all right decay on what's happening in the tack room the research was the one that came most naturally to them along saying they read their inquisitive so therefore researching that people actually they kind of enjoy but the big challenge was the follow up that seemed to be almost universal people actually follow up on actually calling except I think that's where the intimidation comes in and, you know, what's interesting. I would say if you if marketing is anything it's follow up right because it is easy to make the initial connections to do the initial outreach and info fact I'm going to be talking I think it's in session to about what I call the one two punch the one two punch is one marketing effort that actually has two activities to it and some people say oh, I e mailed them they never emailed back hello you know really once is enough you think once is enough right? But follow up and sometimes the recommendation is three and four times that you have to follow up in order for someone to actually notice that you're trying to reach them so if you don't do the follow up, then you basically might as well not have done anything right because follow up is the key to marketing and it's a question of I think finding them the follow up tools that make the most sense for you and then being organized enough to keep track of the information so that you know exactly what you're doing to whom when etcetera and then you schedule that in that's where the self discipline and the structure comes into place stamp says she finds the research again that is the most natural thing. But then she says updating her website is the challenge that she's had so far but the follow up is the one thing she really knows she needs to commit to it is going to commit to and I'll just share my own process because I have to do outreach you know I have to practice what I preach otherwise I wouldn't be worth myself frankly and I have a list of people who have done the three mentoring session with and most of them don't decide right away and so I have to stay in touch with them on a regular basis until they're ready and I will often contact people monthly basically I'll just send a simple email every month saying are you ready yet? I'm here if you are that's all it says and I have my list and it's just in a simple expel excel spreadsheet and most people do not respond and when I find amazing about it is that, uh really this is I think this is the problem with follow up is that you don't often get a response and so you think it's not working and why am I doing it in the first place? Or perhaps you don't even do it and you imagine that people aren't going to respond and really what happens is if you have the mindset where I'm just keep building on my foundation and I'm going to trust that this person is really sieving the message for me and they will respond when they are ready and I can't tell you how many people say to me when they do finally respond maybe after three messages maybe after five messages maybe after three years because the sale cycle is long they say thank you for staying in touch with your multiple messages now I'm ready they thank me for staying in touch right? And you might imagine that you're bothering people with your follow up, but you're not. They will thank you when they're ready. There's a very, very important concept, justin, back of those people, like, what is your justice? I mean, there are very complicated contact management systems that a lot of people use, but I don't think it's necessary there's a version of salesforce dot com that can be used on a you know, individual basis, but really a spreadsheet is all you need is very simple and and what's important, actually, is that you keep track of exactly what the person said, and you schedule what your next action is, right? So they didn't respond. I'm not going to decide what my next action is. When they do respond, I'm going to say, I'm not going to hear from them. You just assume you're not going to hear from them it's a much better mindset, and then you're delighted when they do respond as opposed to oh, they don't want me right? So you just keep track. This is what I did. I'm reaching out to them next month at the same time, and then you just go to that column, and then you act on it.